Myth or Muscle?

from Hemmings Muscle Machines

Storytelling seems to make certain things, both real and mythical, like movie stars, dragons or muscle cars, appear larger than life. After a decade or more, stories mutate until the facts become blurred, while the incredible and often impossible deeds live on forever. In many ways, this is the case with many Fifties and Sixties muscle cars. They have become the stuff of legends, particularly to those performance enthusiasts growing up in the late Seventies and Eighties.
There are still a few veterans of the radical Sixties, shuffling around and looking for a larger belt size, who remember that era of 102-octane gas at every station and behemoth cubic-inch engines. I belong to that generation of boomer graybeards, so clearly I know the absolute, unadulterated truth. Were the muscle cars of the Sixties really as good as the stories would have us believe? Hang on!
My first real muscle-car experience was taking a ride in a friend's 1961 Impala "bubble-top." The Bel Air had a 348-cu.in. engine, four-barrel carb, a "spaghetti" shifter connected to a four-speed, the required Sun tach on the steering column and was fitted with two-inch diameter "plumber's pipes." These were short tubes welded to the head pipes and sealed with screw-on caps that protruded from under the front wheel wells. For those not familiar with this system, you simply unscrewed the caps and you had open exhausts from the manifolds. They were really poor man's headers and all the serious wannabe racers had to have them. It was dark when we raced a white '59 Pontiac Catalina on Long Island's Sunrise Highway, and I was shocked by the flames shooting out of the 348's protruding pipes. I was singed forever.
While factory performance cars of various shapes and sizes had been around for years, it's commonly accepted that the 1964 GTO was the real beginning of the era, due to its mid-size platform. In September of 1964, I was driving past a local Pontiac dealer and spotted a Mayfair Maize '65 GTO hardtop on the showroom floor. I was 20, with the required performance hormones humming, and it was love at first sight. I eventually bought one and it was as close to heaven as I could get and still be breathing. I loved that car. A '65 GTO convertible has been a longtime member of the family. But were these machines actually as good as legend says?
Over the years, muscle car magazines have staged race track shootouts, compared the Top 10 muscle cars of all time, selected which was the all-time fastest, best-looking, most valuable, attracted the most women, painted the wildest colors, etc. We created unabashed editorial sensationalism to sell cars and magazines, and to convince Detroit to make more muscle machines.
But the real answer to the question is no, they were not that great. They were over-powered, under-braked, under-tired, heavy, and they turned like supertankers, while getting 10 MPG (maybe) to the 28-cents-a-gallon gas. But these cars, and the technology of the day, were all we had; we just didn't know any better. That, my fellow muscle car enthusiast, like it or not, is the truth. The only part of the legend that still stands up is that they were torque monsters and "rip the skin off your face" fast!
Compared to today's performance cars, vintage muscle cars are atrocious, but compared to 1950 vintage vehicles, they were state of the art. So "good" has several interpretations here. If going fast in a straight line with tires smoking and no rev limiter is good, then they were great. If not stopping and turning like the Valdez on miniscule 7.75x14 tires is bad, then they were bad. We can spend days picking them apart, but to what end? That's 40-year old technology. What's left is all we have, so who cares if they were (are) really that good? The main thing is that we restore or modify the car we like and pass it along to someone who will be the next caretaker.
The difference between the stock 1964 muscle cars and the 1970 versions is enormous. Engineering, tire technology and fit and finish made great strides. Huge 455, 454 and 426-cu.in. engines were available, cars actually had AM/FM stereo radios that worked, seats reclined, air conditioning and power everything was available at the flick of a salesman's pen. What I call the "rash of flash" graphics was slapped on Trans Am hoods, GTO spoilers, Mustang fenders and even "Mod" vinyl tops.
But the times, they were a-changin'. What happened to the rubber floormats, deleted sound-deadening insulation and no options at all on go-fast cars? Muscle cars had mutated to luxury performance vehicles in just six short years. Sure, they were still fast, but a lot of the kick-assedness was gone. Other insidious forces were also at work as the Sixties decade slammed shut.
Change was in the wind for your favorite muscle car. The insurance comet was about to strike, wiping out muscle cars as we knew them. Sagging sales and increased insurance premiums for high-performance vehicles were stunting manufacturers' enthusiasm for producing these cars. By 1972, the extinction was relatively complete. Watered-down versions of the Camaro and Trans Am and a few others continued on, but were not accepted as serious performance vehicles. We moved into the dark ages of the smog-controlled corporate engines. Oh, the horror!
So you see, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't make any difference whether your favorite muscle car was "really that good," does it? What makes the difference is that we love these machines, whether good or bad, and preserve and enjoy our little piece of American automotive heritage. So blast open that four (or more) barrel(s), shift those gears and smile. Are they really that good? Yeah!

This article originally appeared in the July, 2010 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.